Novaya gazeta

A writer’s correspondence with the prototype of her novel’s protagonist, and its history

I became interested in the Khodorkovsky case about a year and a half ago, and I started reading all the literature around it. Later I had an idea for a new novel, and it occurred to me that Mikhail Borisovich would be an excellent model for one of my protagonists.

. . . I visited the Prosecutor General’s office website, downloaded the verdict and the Moscow City court’s ruling in the appeal, and then dug into them. And it dawned on me that, out of everything I’d read, the verdict was the document that most strongly refuted his guilt. There were nothing in it but absurd, trumped-up charges and descriptions of widespread and common business practices.

It seems that Russians persist in being ‘lazy and incurious’ - too lazy to browse the Internet, read the lengthy musings of lawyers and form an opinion different from the one that’s promulgated on TV and in the newspapers. Otherwise it would be very dangerous for the current regime to publish documents like this as an open public resource. Calling the verdict complex is in my view a wild exaggeration. A high-school student with an average IQ could grasp it, to say nothing of someone more or less aware of Russian law and of the way business is conducted in our dear Motherland. I’m not a lawyer, of course, and my opinion relies on common sense. But so does that of a juror. In the mid-1990s I tried my hand at business, so I have some idea of what it was like at the time. Apart from this, I also went through the Criminal Code, the Penal Code and a two-volume textbook on criminal law. I was so ‘impressed’ by the Prosecutor-General’s office’s verdict that I wrote a several-pages-long critique of it. I actually wanted to write it in poison. For the only real thing to do to the verdict is not to criticize it but to ridicule it. Still some episodes came across to me as ambiguous, so I decided to ask the culprit about them. Like whether tax bills sent to Yukos had been paid and whether investment programmes in Apatit had been implemented. I wrote the ex-oligarch a ten-page letter, using a ten-em typeface and with the minimum space between the lines. Besides a careful review of the case, the letter contained my views on the current goings-on in Putin’s Russia - none of which, I think, would be surprising to readers of Novaya Gazeta. I didn’t play any part in the carving-up of ‘socialist’ property and I didn’t come into any big money. The only thing I got from the victory of Russia’s 1991 democratic revolution was freedom. And now they’re trying to take that one thing away from me (from me personally!). I waited about two months for a reply, which, judging by the stamp, took about two weeks to reach me. But there is also clumsy prison censorship to reckon with; and the prison regime; and the fact that it can’t have been easy for the prisoner to find time to drop me a line. There are four pages in the letter, filled with writing taken from a notebook. The margins contain my surname and address - probably to prevent the prison censor from mixing up letters.

To Natalya Tochilnikova

‘WE ARE LAGGING MORE AND MORE BEHIND’

From: Khodorkovsky M.B., Krasnokamensk, IK-10

Dear Natalya,

Thank you very much for your letter, the brief history of your life, and your attempt to get to the bottom of the verdict.

I wanted right from the beginning to defend myself - and be defended - against the charges in court without referring to the political motivation behind them or to my non-participation in the events involved, since I thought it important publicly to defend not only my own reputation, but also the reputation of people who honestly and in good faith carried out the business transactions involved. I had time to examine them all carefully during my one-and-a-half years in prison.

So far as NIUIF [the Samoilov Scientific Research Institute for Fertilizers, Insecticides and Fungicides] and Apatit are concerned, the court confirmed that the seller (the government) was paid in full, and that the required investments were forwarded to the respective private enterprises [Apatit, NIUIF].

Moreover, the CEOs of the two organizations confirmed that they were still in business and working successfully (after ten years), and that the business plans had been accomplished, with the projects set forth in them (real and not half-baked ones) having been put on line. It stands to reason in these particular cases, then, that there is no injured party! No lawsuit was ever filed!

As to the embezzlement from inside Apatit (this according to the investigation), they completely failed to prove it, since the enterprise was profitable and they were unable therefore to find the slightest motive!

Why should I steal what I already own - since according to them I received 50% of the stolen profits while owning, they themselves acknowledged, around 70% of the company?. It doesn’t make any kind of sense. And matters were even worse when it came to taxes - the prosecution couldn’t present a single unpaid bill! The bills were Yukos’s, not those of some shell company. And I was sentenced (according to the appeal court) for misrepresentation of tax breaks which the court ruled I had indeed been granted. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so damaging - and twice as damaging because even educated people in Russia believe this nonsense. They sympathize with me because ‘the lawyers weren’t capable of defending me’, and say ‘Everyone broke the law, but you were the only one arrested’.

I strongly disagree with this attitude!

If I broke the law, I wouldn’t hide behind politics. I’d settle it ‘in a good way’ very quickly.

Apart from anything else, the politics part is untrue. I never promised anybody that I wouldn’t participate in public life and politics. This is my country and it’s my right - just as it’s the right of every citizen.

It’s easy to see over the past two or three years how the decisions taken by the authorities have suffered from the absence of any real and influential opposition, with the result that the economy is now grinding to a standstill despite the exorbitant price of oil.

It’s true that there’s stability, but there’s also no movement. We’re lagging more and more behind, and it’s dreadful to imagine what might be the result in the coming years. The reports of specialists at the State Committee of the Russian Federation on the statistics involved are scary.

It’s true too that there are ordinary people here in jail - yes, absolutely ordinary citizens of Russia.

Life goes on. I wish you every success.

And please don’t be afraid. Nothing is that bad in our Russia.

Respectfully yours,

(Novaya gazeta, 20.11.2006)